They urge U.S. and ASEAN regional bloc support for addressing threats to the Mekong River and call for improved water data sharing by countries all along the river.
Activists have been pushing the government to allow groups like the Prey Lang Community Network, which ran forest patrols till last year, to monitor illegal logging activities in the protected area.
In recent years, the flows to Southeast Asia's largest lake have at times been delayed, a factor blamed on drought and hydropower dams upstream on the Mekong.
Its hydropower boom has altered the vital Mekong River.
The deforestation alerts showed widespread forest clearings during 2020 and early 2021. In 2019, Prey Lang lost 7,511 hectares of tree cover, an increase of 73% compared to the previous year, according to the University of Maryland.
In Cambodia, the MRC said water levels in Stung Treng and Kratie province fluctuated between -0.02 m and 0.05 m, but that the levels remained higher than the long-term average.
The five, including Ouch Leng, a 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize winner, were detained by rangers on Friday for being inside the Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary without permission.
Banteng and red muntjacs, also known as Bali cattle and barking deer, respectively, are disappearing in the face of business interests, deforestation, and poaching for the table.
Their efforts may turn around declining numbers of some endangered species but containing highly profitable illegal logging presents immediate danger.
Analysts say some of China’s 11 upper Mekong River watershed dams have contributed to droughts since 2019 in downstream Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam.
Hun Sen said the first drop of oil was extracted on Monday by KrisEnergy, a Singapore-based oil, and gas company, from a well in offshore Block A in the Gulf of Thailand, west of the coastal Cambodian province of Preah Sihanouk.
Thailand, Cambodia and southern Vietnam, all of which are downstream on the Mekong from Laos, have endured a two-year drought, imperiling the livelihoods of 70 million people living hand to mouth.
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